Ever wondered what you should be doing with incoming mail? Give these methods a try! They're my tried and true methods for achieving inbox zero every day.

HOW I FILTER INCOMING MAIL 

When an email comes to my inbox, there are three different things that could happen to it.

• If it's a newsletter, it's automatically going to get rolled up in my daily Unroll.Me email. I have it set to come to my inbox at night, so at around 5pm every day, I get the previous day's email rollup. This is good because if there were any hot sales, it reduces my impulse purchases, and I'm tackling these newsletters after all the business tasks are done for the day. 
• If it's a current client email, it gets flagged red which tells me I need to take a look at it. 
• If it's anything else, it lands in my inbox. Allie (my assistant) takes the first pass at my inbox so by the time I dive in, things have been either trashed, filed, or moved to the "Dannie Please Review" inbox. (For more on multiple inboxes, head here.) 

HOW I MANAGE MAIL ONCE IT'S READ

Believe it or not, I only have five main folders in my inbox. I used to get so annoyed scrolling down a long list of folders, so I have everything in five categories: LE Consulting Business (this is where my guest post, collaboration, proposal, etc. folders are), Current Clients, Past Clients (I archive clients here for two years and then delete the folder), Receipts (I sort receipts by year), and Secondary Businesses (Side Hustle Gal and my upcoming partnership with Rosemary Watson and TwigyPosts). Everything is in a subfolder inside one of those five folders. If a client has multiple projects with me, that client also has a separate subfolder for each project (i.e. Monique Melton hired me for her Book Launch PR and for general marketing - under the Monique Melton folder, there is a separate folder for each of these two projects). 

HOW CANNED RESPONSES SAVE ME TIME

I have quite a few different canned responses set up in Gmail to save me time and energy when responding (and to make life easier for Allie). I have canned responses pre-templated for sending a proposal (if needed), welcoming a client, outlining my policies and procedures, asking for reviews, and even for setting up partnership/collaboration opportunities.

How do you use email to save time? Let me know in the comments!